As automation becomes more complex, the number and type of sensors which must be deployed within an automated system to determine if certain states of the automation system exist and to provide input data to automation controllers monitoring and controlling performance of the automated system have dramatically increased. Collecting input data from the increased number of sensors using for example, point to point data collection methods, may require large data structures and memory capacity for storage of the input data including historical automation timing data for cycle time analysis, or may substantially limit collection and analysis of historical automation timing data to partial data derived from a sample of operational cycles which may provide limited analysis of the cycle time behavior and variability of the automated system. Accuracy of the automation data collected may be negatively impacted, for example, by use of a computing device having a slower data capture rate than the scan rate of the automation controller due to point to point data collection methods, computing device configuration, delay in time stamping automation data collected from a controller when the time stamp is determined by the computing device capturing the timing data from the controller, and communication latency between the controller and the computing device.